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Cover Me Impressed

With a focus on the 60's-90's music scene, CMI is a Paradiso for Lovers Cover Songs! Each post focuses on a particular song and provides its original and most popular recordings as well as covers versions. Patrons of CMI vote on the most deserving cover version, which will then live to compete again, battling other cover songs in a future post.

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Oh My. This one is definitely monumental. I’m sure that those of you who have already had to endure my musical rants over the years have already grown tired of hearing me say that this is the most historical, important and exhilarating single in the history of pop/rock music. It is nevertheless true. Without this single and the Beatles appearance on Ed Sullivan, the Fab Four remain only a short-lived British fad, Elvis disappears after he joins the Army, and nothing of what became the entirety of pop/rock music post-1964 would ever be known to us. And besides all that, I just really love this song. It’s the most magical 2 minutes, 24 seconds in pop music. It’s obvious to me that Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio in 1895 just so there would be a vehicle for spreading this song 68 years later.

Oh, yeah. The covers:
* Alex Chilton: Another dud cover for the Chilt. Couldn’t even finish listening to the whole thing. Why even bother play this if you’re not gonna even try to do it right? Chilton has much more talent than this… or does he?
* Al Green: Very good cover. A different song, really. Best part: “And when I touch you I sho’ ’nuff feel happy inside.”
* Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle: This might be the greatest scene in Indian film history. There is no point in trying to top the Beatles musically. So why not try and make people laugh? They certainly succeeded. If Benny Hill had been Indian instead of British he would have featured something like this on his tv show. Got my vote.

Agree with Cuspid, Chilton’s version was subpar. Al Green does a nice job of Al-Greenifying the tune. But the vote has to go to Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle. What a performance! It ran a bit long but when you’ve got a guy who can dance like Rafi you tend to let it ride. BTW: Rafi is the first Indian graduate of the esteemed Joe Cocker school of dance.

Well… Chilton’s version is meh, but I didn’t like the Algreenification of the song, and it’s only the video that makes makes Mohammed and Asha’s version tolerable. To me, anyway. I found the music to be kinda silly. So I had to give it to Chilton. One day, Richie will give us a Chilton cover that is superb. One day.

Although I am a huge Big Star fan and buy all the endless pillaged vault material, buying Alex Chilton solo is a recipe for frequent mediocrity. No one ever seems to have given less of a shit about pleasing his fanbase than Alex. Depression, alienation, cynicism be thy name. Al Green, not surprisingly does a fine job reinventing this song successfully in his style and perhaps should win but when you throw What’s Up Tiger Lily, Austin Powers, The Marx Brothers, a quart of liquid LSD and a bit of ecstasy in a blender with a Beatle classic the result is non-stop fun.